Category: Sustainability
-
History Of Sustainability
Jeremy Caradonna wrote a history of sustainability in his book, Sustainability. (I read the revised edition from 2022). This work draws linkages from early ideas of sustainability and looks at where we are now. Things have moved forward, and back, on the sustainability front. There is some interesting history. As someone who lives in Georgia,…
-
Benefit Corporation Versus B Corp
There are two related terms for coporations that are seeking to do good in addition to doing well. Both terms often apply to such corporations but this isn’t always the case. As such, it is useful to distinguish between them. So lets look at Benefit Corporation Versus B Corp. B Corp A B Corp is…
-
Eliminating The Concept Of Waste
In their book Cradle to Cradle, sustainability writers William (Bill) McDonough and Michael Braungart argued that we should be thinking not in terms of Cradle to Grave — birth to death — for products. Instead, we should be thinking of reuse. Their second book along those lines, Upcycle, goes further. Their basic argument is that…
-
The Path To 2050
How can the world get to carbon neutral by 2050? This is the date the Paris Agreement specified for getting away from the activities that produce greenhouse gasses (see here). Many would argue that that the Paris agreement was not ambitious enough. Still, we don’t currently have a clear plan to reach carbon neutral by…
-
Comprehensive Guide To Drawdown Solutions
Drawdown is a New York Times Bestseller and you can see why. The book, by a large team led by Paul Hawken, has a profusion of detail on ways that the impacts of climate change can be alleviated and ultimately reversed. It provides a guide to drawdown solutions. The book gives an optimistic view of…
-
Triple Bottom Line
John Elkington gave us the idea of the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) in 1994. In 2018 he proposed that the idea be recalled for a retooling. Things hadn’t worked out as he hoped. The Triple Bottom Line The idea behind the Triple Bottom Line is simple. Rather than fixating on financial performance alone, the bottom…
-
Stakeholder Management As A Threat
For my second and final post on Vivek Ramaswamy’s Woke Inc. I want to discuss his view of stakeholder management. Especially, the idea of stakeholder management as a threat (specifically to democracy). Stakeholder Management And Woke As I mentioned in a prior post part of the challenge with definitions is that people aren’t clear what…
-
Environmental Impact Equation
Ray Anderson is a bit of a legend in sustainable business circles. He was from Georgia and even played American football for Georgia Tech to which he later bequeathed a Center in Sustainable Business. Today I’ll look at his book — Mid-Course Correction, and highlight the way he saw the role of technology in an…
-
Competitive Advantage And Social Purpose
How should firms approach competing using their commitment to social and environmental purpose? This was the challenge tackled by Omar Rodríguez-Vilá and Sundar Bharadwaj in their 2017 article published in the Harvard Business Review. (Sundar is a colleague of mine at the University of Georgia). The approach they outline seeks to show a clear way…
-
What Has Been Studied In Academic Sustainable Marketing Research?
It is (almost) always interesting to go back and discover what has been studied in the past. Academic journals in the marketing field have been with us for many generations so we have a large sample to look at. Brian Chabowski and colleagues in 2011 reviewed what had been studied in academic sustainable marketing research.…
